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Editor quit hyperlocal site ‘because it made no money’

A journalist who set up a hyperlocal website has revealed that he gave it up because it wasn’t making any money.

Richard Jones launched Saddleworth News in February 2010 but handed the reins over to someone else after he realised he couldn’t make a career out of it.

Writing in the new book What Do We Mean by Local?, Richard said that far from being a blueprint for the industry’s future, hyperlocal sites faced the same financial pressures as all other news operations.

Richard, who now works as a visiting lecturer in online at the University of Leeds, has passed the site on to a  journalism student at the University of Huddersfield who is writing Saddleworth News as a final year project.

He wrote: “I’m a journalist, not a salesman. And I found selling ads on Saddleworth News difficult. Despite my site’s reach of more than 20,000 unique users per month in an area of only 24,000 people, it was hard to persuade the butcher and the baker of the value of taking an ad: much easier for them to do what they’ve always done and use the glossy magazines or the daily paper.

“Most of the ads I did sell were to people who used the website as readers and had their own small online businesses. But I only ever made £150 a month from ads, a paltry return given that I had extended the time I spent writing it to two hours every weekday.

“When my daughter turned two and we wanted to start putting her into nursery for at least a couple of days each week, I thought about trying to make Saddleworth News my full-time job. Had I been 22, I might have given it a go, but with a family and a mortgage, gambling isn’t so attractive.

“I would have needed to increase my income from the site at least tenfold to start to make it viable as a career, which would have meant spending all of my time chasing cash rather than chasing stories.”

Richard added that hyperlocal websites do have a future but is sceptical about whether hyperlocal journalism of a professional standard has any more of a future than newspaper journalism.

“For all the benefits of hyperlocal reporting, the cash crisis facing other parts of our trade is there too,” he said.

“Working on Saddleworth News was fun and frustrating, exciting and boring, illuminating and tedious, just like journalism is. But I’m afraid it didn’t get me any closer to a model which will keep reporters in the councils and courtrooms.”

  • What Do We Mean by Local? Grass-roots Journalism – Its Death and Rebirth, is edited by John Mair, Neil Fowler and Ian Reeves and, published by Abramis.

7 comments

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  • April 19, 2012 at 9:11 am
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    interesting – just goes to show that traditional newsprint is still the only game in town in most of this country.
    All the new media zealots out there heading over the digital abyss, forget there are tens of millions of people in this country who still buy, pay to advertise in, and read local and regional newspapers.
    Keep the faith, ladies and gents!

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  • April 19, 2012 at 1:55 pm
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    Yes, the ABCs are bad but we are in the midst of the worst recession for 80 years.

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  • April 19, 2012 at 2:30 pm
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    It’s a bit simplistic to split this into a print v digital debate again, and perhaps this shows the reasons why both suffer when they don’t integrate effectively.

    Rather than print journalists fighting digital journalists and vice-versa, they should ask the big question, which is why should advertisers bother with either of them when they can advertise effectively for free using social media and get a huge reach of people on facebook and twitter or on their own websites?

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  • April 19, 2012 at 3:44 pm
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    Dave – you fall for the myth that everyone is using social media. Only the young and techno-savvy are. A growing number for sure but still a minority. Go to the small towns and villages across the UK (where most people live) and see what people aged over 40 are doing. Certainly not being ‘connected’ – millions are still buying and reading local newspapers.

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  • April 19, 2012 at 4:14 pm
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    Good point Dave, it’s not about crude tribalism between print and online news delivery.

    To me, the two main reasons local news outlets of either ilk are in the state they are in are:

    1 – The internet means there are many, often much more cost-effective ways for potential advertisers to spend their money than their used to be when local papers were often the only way to market a local product or service. With Google being most people’s first port of call when looking for something these days, it’s not just about crude advertising either – search engine optimisation has become much more important to many businesses. I also think a lot of advertisers pulled their ads temporarily during the recession, only to find it didn’t impact on sales – particularly if they were running very lacklustre slots which did little more than provide contact details.

    2 – People live much less localised lives and are therefore simply less interested in local news and issues. Plus, with people having so many different ways to amuse themselves (800-plus channel TV, internet, social media etc) you’ve got to compete so much harder for their attention than you used to. There are only so many hours in the day and if people can fill those hours with something more interesting/exciting than local news, they will do.

    Someone one here a year or so ago summed it up perfectly with a very eloquent comment – local papers enjoyed a monopoly for a long time, got complacent and so didn’t see both the threat and opportunity of the internet in time to do something about it.

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  • April 20, 2012 at 11:34 am
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    “I’m a journalist not a salesman” – perhaps just as important as the print versus online debate in this particular situation. That level of UU/niche market should bring the site into the realms of a lot more revenue than that – but people need selling too. Figures alone dont sell anything, how do you think reps continue to sell more expensive space (raw material costs etc) against declining ABC’s and changeable Jicreg figures.

    couple of footnotes:
    History has shown that large brands that have increased their advertising in times of recession – reap the benefits when the economy bounces back.
    There is a a well known argument that there is more localisation in times of recession
    Yves – I think you miss understand social media – the likes of twitter and facebook – its not really local websites. There is a big difference in demographics for each of these general classifications.
    Newspaper revenue from ads will drop, some of it can be transferred too an online offering – but it wont be like for like.

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